Astronomy Colloquium

We are entering an era where the current difficulties in building an understanding of the formation and evolution of our Galaxy can be overcome. Using new data-driven approaches to spectroscopy, we have derived ages and precision chemical abundances for millions of stars across the Galaxy. With new methodologies to derive information from spectra, across a multitude of surveys, combined with the distance and stellar motion measurements being delivered by the Gaia mission, we are constructing the ultimate synthesis of Galactic information. I will showcase the information that we have derived from stars across the Galaxy, how we have derived this information, and what this is telling us about the Milky Way's formation. In particular I will highlight recent work that strongly constrains the formation of the Milky Way disk and demonstrates the (dire) prospects for chemical tagging of the Milky Way.